Epping in Essex

Visit Epping and the surrounding villages and stay in bed & breakfast accommodation:

Epping, Essex. What Hampstead Heath is to the North and West Londoner, Epping Forest is to those who live on its east side. Now some 6,000 acres, it was ten times this area 200 years ago. And 200 years before that it was probably as big again. In 1882 the forest was purchased for the public and it has inspired countless artists, among them the painter and sculptor, Sir Jacob Epstein. Its hornbeams are especially famous, and it was at High Beach that the poet Tennyson used to live in his early days. The Catacombs are an underground grotto built of huge blocks of stone in the 19th century.

Despite its nearness to the ever outward sprawl of London, Epping retains its identity as a small market town. Its Church of St John the Baptist is Victorian, built in 1889 with the tower added 20 years later, by Bodley and Garner. The medieval Church of All Saints is at Epping Upland, to the north west and is 13th-century, with a l6th-century brick tower.

Not far from Epping are two houses designed by Kempe, Wood House, which is based on the marvellous Sparrowe's House at Ipswich, and Copped Hall, both of the 1890s. Evidence of much earlier occupation may be found in the forest at Loughton Camp and Ambresbury Banks, Iron Age earthworks marking the site of encampments of long ago.